Salvation (10 page)

“You have to show me the applications first.”

“Do we have a
dare
?” Those eyes were very dark, her own personal abyss.

She had never been so thrilled to drown. “Yes.”

Harvard. Princeton. Yale.
Salva tried not to wince as the woman behind the post office counter pounded the stamp—once, twice, thrice—and tossed the applications onto a pile behind her. She slammed the metal window down in his face. It was already five minutes after five o’clock, and the December night had coiled into darkness. He had been the last at the end of a long line.

Salva turned and shoved his way into the cold—the kind of cold that made his ears curl and his teeth ache. No snow—just the bitter chill and expanding patches of ice. He buried his hands in his sleeves and hugged his arms to his chest, an action that rendered no more defense than his thin jacket.

The idea of spending the night at the Laundromat was unbearable.

He’d thought about bailing on the post office trip, but then he would have had to relive the interrogation he had faced this
morning.
“¿Salva, qué es?”
Talia had asked as he’d set the first of the envelopes on top of his school gear.

“
Sí,
Salva, what are you mailing?” Casandra had chimed in.

“They’re nothing,” he’d said, brushing off the question.

Nothing,
he repeated to himself now.
Forget about the applications
. They were just a dare, and he’d lived up to his side, which was the point—so he didn’t flunk AP English.

And he wasn’t flunking. With Beth’s help, he’d pulled up his grade to almost a B.

She’d even told him this afternoon that his final college essays were “awesome.”

Bizarre.
Because Beth didn’t use the term
awesome
with regard to his writing. At least, she never had before. She wasn’t as harsh now as back in September, but she used lots of phrases like “I think you could make this stronger” and “Get to the point,” her polite version of “Cut the crap.”

What did “awesome” mean? That after four revisions, it was obvious his essays were so bad he hadn’t a hope of ever fixing them to a level that would gain him acceptance?

Of course I won’t get accepted. People from Podunk don’t get into top-ten colleges.

But he couldn’t tell Beth that. She seemed so certain she was going to Stanford; and if she was going to be crushed, he didn’t want to be on the side of I-told-you-so.

Though maybe he was wrong. Maybe she
would
get in. She’d claimed her grandfather was an alum. Expensive schools
counted things like that. They called them Legacy Rules or something.

Salva, on the other hand, had a father who had become a U.S. citizen less than two years ago—not exactly a legacy.

And a mother who is dead.
Memories from the hospital threatened:
Mamá
’s voice, faint from the pain; her skin, bruised purple around the central line in her neck; her eyes, glazing over as the nurse had pumped in more medication. The caustic complaint of the old man in the waiting room who had claimed that
these people
were the reason no one could afford insurance.

Salva’s feet skidded on ice. He grabbed hold of a slumped fence, managed to regain his footing, and looked up.

To his surprise, light glowed from the single wide.
What the H?

Had Char dropped off Talia and Casandra at home early with no one here to watch them?

He bolted forward through the gate, slid again, and grabbed the handrail, then hauled himself up the porch, tugged open the door, and braved the Shrine—careful to keep his eyes off the portrait on the living room wall.

“
¡Salva, finalmente está!
” Casandra barreled into him. “He’s here. He’s here!
¡A cenar!
”

Talia arrived, and they dragged him into the kitchen.

Where the smell of
Mamá
’s tamales punched him in the gut: chicken,
queso blanco
, chilies, and the overwhelming scent of homemade corn
masa
. An intense longing seared through his chest, and he fought for control. Losing.

His older sister stood behind the table. Her black hair, a foot shorter than
Mamá
’s, was pushed back in a straightforward ponytail. She wore an apron over her shirt, and her forehead was frosted with sweat, or perhaps steam, as she wielded a simple kitchen knife with the speed of a cook who’d paid her dues in a Mexican restaurant. A pile of minced tomatoes covered the cutting board.

“
¡Todavía no!
” She swatted Casandra’s pointing finger away from the nearby pan of rolled corn husks, then covered them over with a towel. “The salad isn’t ready yet, so unless you want to help…”

His younger sisters hightailed it.

Salva scowled. “Lucia, what are you doing here? It’s the week before your finals.”

She was supposed to be two hours away, studying her ass off at the local community college. Her grades hadn’t been so hot last quarter.

She handed over a metal bowl and a head of romaine lettuce. “I did the laundry. Shred that.”

“
Papá
will lose it if he finds you here in the middle of the week.”

“
No te preocupes.
His shift’s not over till ten. I’ll be long gone, and then I’ll pass my finals before coming home for Christmas.” She pushed aside the tomatoes and removed the stem from a yellow pepper. “What were you
not
doing here?”

Like it was any of her business. But Lucia’s opinion had
always had more influence over Salva than he cared to admit. Even his
name.
It was her fault he was called Salva, instead of the common and more masculine Salvino, because when Lucia was two, she’d thought everyone’s name should end with an
a
—
Papá, Mamá,
and
Salva
. Only his older brother, Miguel, had escaped.

“Salva,” she continued to pry, “why are you so late?”

It was a Tuesday, which wasn’t much of an excuse. The deal with Char was supposed to be on an as-needed basis, but he had needed to submit the applications. And Beth had agreed to stay after school today to look at them one last time.

He thought about trying to explain but could already hear Lucia’s response.
So you could live up to a dare? Is that more important than your sisters?

It wasn’t. He knew it wasn’t. His mother would never have been okay with the whole arrangement with Char. And clearly, Lucia wasn’t either.

She finished chopping up the yellow pepper. “I thought you were supposed to be home earlier now,” she said, reaching for the half-filled bowl of lettuce. There was a brief tug-of-war over the bowl, which she won. “Since you’re free of all your celebrity football engagements.” She cracked a smile.

He couldn’t help grinning. He knew she’d read every press article about the team.

She swiped the chopped-up pepper and tomatoes into the salad.

He snagged a large spoon from a drawer and held it out to her, yanked it away, then offered it back. And lost it.

“Where
were
you?” she repeated the question as she tossed the vegetables.

“School,” he replied. “Someone was helping me with homework.”

The spoon clattered against the side of the bowl. “What’s her name?”

¡Ay!
Too late, he realized his mistake. If he’d told her he was working with a friend, she wouldn’t have thought much of it, but his
friends
typically needed Salva’s help, not the other way around. “Look, we have a project together,” he said. Though, technically, the project hadn’t started yet, but he didn’t want her getting the wrong idea about Beth.

Which would be what, exactly?

He’d spent more time than was necessary over the past month studying the shade of his study partner’s hair in different angles of light. During those two weeks before the state championship, he’d almost convinced himself that his sudden attraction to her on homecoming was a complete deviation. That Char’s comment had instigated some kind of gut reaction to defend Beth as a victim. And totally skewed his view of reality.

In class, he’d seen nothing but the walking disaster area. Same mess. Same common brown eyes and frizz. And then he’d woken up that one day after school to find her, inches
away, staring at him with those wide doe’s eyes and that rare glitter of red in her hair.

Salva had almost bolted. Yet ten minutes later he had found himself in the middle of a stupid, commitment-filled dare.

Which was
none
of his older sister’s business.

“Casandra! Talia!” he called, “
¡A cenar!
”

The pounding of feet answered.

Lucia crumbled the
queso fresco
over the top of the salad. “Poorly done,
hermano
.” She gave him a look that turned serious. “And here I thought it was just
Mamá
you wouldn’t talk about.”

He opened the fridge, took out the milk, and closed the door with more force than was necessary. They weren’t doing this.

His younger sisters arrived, talking over each other.

“You’ll never believe—”

“Guess what happened today!”

He let the nine-year-old voices drown out the anger he didn’t have a right to feel.

The dinner discussion was all girl stuff. If only Miguel would move back to balance things out, but after three and a half years, that wasn’t going to happen. Salva should have known, maybe, from the beginning, considering the circumstances. The fights between his older brother and
Papá.
And everything Miguel had had to give up for
la familia.

He had been Salva’s hero, their parents’ pride. The first child to graduate—to get accepted into college.
El futuro, Papá
had called him. A future sucked into the swirling pit of hospital
and funeral bills. Miguel had given up everything—his tuition, school, an entire year of his life—to work and take care of
la familia.

And then the fights had started:
Papá
ordering Miguel to go back to school; Miguel arguing that there wasn’t any money;
Papá
in denial, trying to fulfill the promise he had made to his wife that all her children would get an education—slamming that shredded, impossible dream into his oldest son’s chest, pushing Miguel away when the last thing any of them could afford to lose was another family member.

The entire year had been like a chasm.

Salva felt his stomach roll backward as he took a bite of his mother’s tamales.
I can’t eat this.

He stood.

Then froze as his father walked in.

“¡Papá!”
the younger girls shouted. “You’re home early!”

Salva’s gaze shot toward Lucia.

She didn’t raise an eyebrow, though she must have been stunned. Instead, she pushed the tamales toward the empty plate she had set out for whenever
Papá
came home.
“¿A cenar?”
she asked.

“Claro.”
Señor Resendez made a great show of inhaling the aroma, then seated himself. He swallowed his first tamale in three bites. “Sit down, Salvador.”

Salva sat.

And watched as his father bit into his next
masa
wrap.
“Storm is coming,” the older man said. “We had to shut down the plant. I do not think you will be able to return to school tomorrow, Lucita.”

“Está bien,”
she replied.

It wasn’t
bien
, but Salva had to hand it to his sister. She wasn’t the type to freak in the face of an impending lecture.

Papá
had a gift with people. Everyone liked him: the neighbors, the workers at the plant, the owners who had made him manager. Señor Resendez was open, friendly—the type of person who could make a perfect stranger spill the details of his or her life in a matter a minutes. He had a reputation for being a guy who’d laugh off your mistakes, get you out of a mess, and charge nothing but his own pleasure in retelling the story.

Unless you happened to be one of his own children.

In which case, you’d better succeed.

Their father finished his third tamale, then started in on his favorite topic. “So what did you learn today?”

Casandra and Talia reeled off a song with all the state capitals in it. Both girls were graced with praise.

“And you, Salva?” Señor Resendez started his fourth tamale.

Salva hadn’t learned much. With all the random Christmas stuff—the b-ball tournament, winter concert, drama production—academics at the high school had pretty much crumbled to a halt. He told about the food bank drive he was running through ASB.

“Sí, bien.” Papá
took a drink of water, then finally turned his
attention to Lucia. “And what are you doing home before finals, Lucita?” He set down his glass. “Did your power go out again?”

That was the excuse she had tried last time.

“I didn’t have class this afternoon.” She lowered her own glass.

“And now you will not be back for class in the morning. You will not gain a transfer into a four-year college with bad grades, Lucita.”

She sat perfectly still, meeting his eyes, then said, “I don’t need a four-year degree.”

My God.
Had she learned nothing from Miguel’s experience?

Lucia continued, “I can get my certification to give meds right now, and as soon as I graduate, I can extend my hours at the local retirement home.”

“That is
nada.
” Señor Resendez brushed off the statement as if she hadn’t even bothered to talk.

“It’s a good job,” she said.

“There is no future there. Your mother and I, we bring you here so you can get an education. This is all that matters.”

“Really?” she snapped back. “What about
la familia
? I picked the girls up from school and spent the last two hours with them. Why don’t you ask Salva why he wasn’t here until after five?” She torqued the conversation.

No way. Salva didn’t know why she was pushing this argument. As he saw it, she was lucky
Papá
wasn’t taking her seriously. It was lousy timing on her part. Or maybe not. Maybe
the tamales were part of the plan. But Salva wasn’t taking this hit for her.
She
didn’t have to live here. “I was at school,” he said, “
studying
.”